PUBLISHERS MUST DO AWAY WITH THE ECONOMIC ARGUMENT

Winzim Online

Nyamfukudza responding to questions at the Indaba Conference

Senior Zimbabwean writer Stanley Nyamfukudza struck a chord with delegates at the recently ended Indaba Conference when he meanwhile lifted the blame on the economy for the impasse reigning in the local book industry and identified the dwindling publishers’ moral obligation to society and government’s resignation in the book industry as the problem.

UK-based Nyamfukudza was the first keynote speaker at the conference on its first day, July 29, 2019. He was introduced by his old time friend and fellow writer Musaemura Zimunya whose brief background of their relationship was but timely, given the theme and environment of the Indaba.

Back in the days when they were members of a creative writing group at the University of Rhodesia, Zimunya remembered Nyamfukudza as ‘a quiet, self-effacing, almost intractable, implacable, and difficult-to-please character’. The brotherly relationship as writers was further strengthened by the circumstances that followed the “pots and pans” demonstration, in which they participated, which happened at the university against the oppressive system. Arrests, imprisonment, and eventually exile, all these were memories which Zimunya shared and had the delegates gripped in imaginings of what it was like back then for these writers whom Zimbabwe celebrates today.

Nyamfukudza took it further, delineating the context in which the literary boom of the 80s happened.

How educating it was to hear it from one who saw it all!

         The country had just won its Independence; the Zimbabwe International Book Fair had been launched and had also become the prime venue for the NOMA Award that solely sought to promote book publishing in Africa in areas of fiction, scholarship and children’s literature.

       While the political and cultural scene changed, Nyamfukudza said ‘a seismic change’ gripped the book publishing industry also.

         His stint as editor, actually as the first black editor, at one of the two publishing houses, from 1981, was a major task, given the new political environment in which he had to work.

        “One of my briefs as editor was …that the company director informed us the education minister had made it absolutely clear to the company that they were accorded the room to publish and sell their materials to the captive readership in the schools because the company had a responsibility to society to publish literature,” said Nyamfukudza.

         And the government, as he would emphasize, was being involved in the book industry.

      “The important issue is the fact that it was possible for the Ministry of Education to convince publishers that they (publishers) had an obligation to publish creative writing by Zimbabwean writers because they were being given the privilege to sell and market their textbooks to the captive market that the schools made available to them. If publishers could be convinced in that manner at that time, I do not see why they could not be convinced in the same manner to have the same obligation to Zimbabwean society,” Nyamfukudza said.

         Today, it is common in literary discussions to hear a majority of publishers blaming the unstable economy for the low book sales, particularly fiction books. Some have made it a public statement that they would not publish fiction because it does not sale.

         Nyamfukudza had a different view drawn from the era of the ‘boom’.

      “Never mind the economics because we knew that if you publish fiction in Shona or English or IsiNdebele, you would not sell a lot of titles, at most you would probably sell 300 copies. The best-selling book at that time was Mindblast by Dambudzo Marechera and it did not sell more than 1000 copies a year, but still that did not stop publishers from publishing new books that were being written by Zimbabwean writers because they had accepted that they had a responsibility to society,” he said.

     From his presentation, two major issues emerged – the government’s role in the publishing industry and the moral responsibility of the publisher to society.

          Nyamfukudza, while he accepted the reality that a writer of fiction alone cannot make a living in a country such as Zimbabwe, he said writers do not usually write with the money motive in mind. This point which he made is what is currently the belief stuck in the minds of some publishers and writers, hence a few fiction titles are on the lists.

         “It’s not an economic argument. The fact that fiction does not make money should not stop new fiction from being published…I think it is possible for the Zimbabwean reading public, the government, and publishers to work together for the benefit of the society,”   said Nyamfukudza.

       His proposal towards this idea of the tripartite effort, as it can be called, involved, among other things, government chipping in by ‘putting books out to tender to try and achieve a situation where every child has a textbook’. This, he said, would in turn stop book piracy and further places a responsibility on publishers to publish not only textbooks but venture into other areas so that children have a variety of reading material.

       How then can today’s publishers let go of the profit motive?

     Nyamfukudza said in other businesses, people stock some products to keep customers coming and the same can be done by publishers. Profits they make in publishing textbooks can be used, as a moral responsibility, to publish in areas (such as fiction) that may not be so profitable, so as to enhance children’s skills of creativity and not lose Zimbabwe’s tradition as a country active in creating literary material.

       His ideas got a nod from the house, including local writer Virginia Phiri and a publisher from Cameroon who commented during discussion time that the profitability aspect has been inherited from publishing trainings and that the government should be a facilitator if the publishing industry is to grow.

      Zimunya also commented that the Zimbabwean people are beneficiaries of the vision which government once fostered in the early 80s so that we become a people who are learned and capable of creating.

MORE ABOUT THE BOOK FAIR IS COMING!